Our adventures in a little house on wheels

Category Archives: in camp

After reprovisioning at Lake Cahuilla County Park (outside of La Quinta), we drove up to one of our favorite places on the planet: Indian Cove campground in Joshua Tree National Park. We stayed at Indian Cove last year and loved it so much that we wanted to come back this year for an extended visit. We stayed for nine days (eight nights), and could have spent quite another week in the area. The weather was perfect, not too hot, with much less wind than Anza-Borrego (and Lake Cahuilla), and beautiful nights.

We spent ten beautiful days in the southern part of Anza-Borrego State Park, not far from the Mexican border. The days were hot, the nights cool, and the wind fierce at times, but we had a great time hiking and exploring the area. (Click on any of the images to see them larger.)

Susan captured this gorgeous sunset last night while I was off doing the dishes after dinner.

After a lovely week in the relative quiet of the Canyonlands National Park’s Needles district–an area we highly recommend, by the way–we are now a bit north of Moab, in a decent RV park. We had been prepared for a bit of craziness here in Moab, but it is very quiet. It appears that the never-ending spring break of the western states, which we’ve been butting up against since Joshua Tree, is finally at an end.

Yesterday, we spent a quiet day: doing laundry, shopping for groceries and performing a little bit of recon in Canyonlands’ Island in the Sky district. Once you get in the middle of this district, you immediately know where the name came from: you are up above the canyons with an unbelievable view from nearly every vantage. We took a nice two-mile hike yesterday along the Grand Viewpoint trail, which literally followed the rim of the island over the canyon. Today, we’re going to go off on a longer hike over there while Susan’s curry simmers in the crockpot.

The Shafer Canyon road looked interesting, but Susan wasn’t having any of it. (Photo credit Susan)

The landscape is as big as the sky here.

Out on the rim of the canyon on the Grand Viewpoint Trail.

This will be our last extended stay on this trip; at the end of the week, we’re going to wind our way back to Portland via Boise and La Grande, to check in on the grandkids (and their parents 😉 ). It’s been a pretty amazing trip so far, and, while we’ll be happy to get home for a short while, we’re already thinking of our next trip, which starts in May.

Well, not exactly—we’re in a town called Virgin, about 15 minutes west of Zion National Park. It took a couple of days to get up here, but we’re camped happily in a place called the Zion River Resort, and will probably be here through next Monday. There’s a lot to see here; it’s my first time to this area, and Susan’s second. She’s off hiking today while I deal with some household stuff, but I’m hoping to find some places to shoot at sunset.

The travels here were fine, although we did end up in the middle of storm front that moved through the Southwest. We saw some snow in the mountains and have had close-to-freezing temperatures at night. Luckily, we have good heat and a hot tub a short walk away, and the temperatures look to be rising later this week.

We’ll post some pictures from our time in Valley of Fire soon, but I wanted to let folks know where we were, and what we’re up to.

We are now safely encamped deep inside Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. It was a beautiful drive up along Lake Mead in the wilderness–we got to bypass Vegas traffic entirely and see some gorgeous scenery.
There are a small number of campsites in the park, and we were extremely lucky to get one of the last ones available. (We’re watching with amusement the daily land grab for spaces as I write this.)
Connectivity is non-existent in most of the park, so don’t expect to hear from us for a few days, but know that we’re in a wonderful place, despite a bit of breeziness.